Men’s 1st XV v Deal & Betteshanger 10/04/2010

Home – London 2 South East

Report by Andy Ward

Won 53-14

Well, where to start? The weather had turned out pretty damn nice – and about time too. Lunch was decent and the pints were flowing. We’d finished lunch at around 2:00 and still had an hour to wait for the game and the attractions of the bar proved difficult to resist. The view was better than it has been for ages too!

The game kicked off with Deal and Betteshanger starting at a fairly decent pace, attacking the ball and generally getting in the face of the home team. They were winning the ball and were trying to work some space when all of a sudden – Adam pounced on a pass that was a little lax and, quicker than you could say “interception”, the ball was under the posts. Not touched down for another minute as Adam will toy with people, but eventually he put all out of their agony and did touch the ball down and then made light work of the conversion to put Hove 7 to the good.

But, before we could congratulate ourselves on such good fortune, Deal & Betteshanger also intercepted a wayward pass and suddenly it was 7 apiece. A little later on, Hove took a throw and made a pigs arse of it and let Deal and Betteshanger gain possession. Quickly they started a maul and Hove were slow to defend it and the inevitable try was scored – followed by a conversion to take the visitors to a 14-7 lead with only 14 minutes on the clock.

Hmm. Not what we had anticipated. But, and ruining your excitement straight away – those were the last points that the visitors were to score that day – and their last in the league of this season!

But, Hove were not finished yet (despite the best efforts of Blakey!) who flagged for in touch when Sean appeared to have scored a damn fine try. Still, a mere four minutes later, Ben Ward made a good run and scored.

Things then went a bit quiet for twenty minutes and the crowd resorted to discussions as to which team had the plumpest 8… Discretion prevents me from saying who started that debate!

After a few stoppages for injuries and water, the clock was showing 41 minutes when Ben Ward made another break and roared towards the line and released an excellent pass to Nick Marshall on the wing to go over for Hove’s third of the afternoon. The half time whistle followed some minutes later and the scoreboard declared it was 17-14 to Hove. And it wasn’t wrong.

Adam kicked the ball to restart the second half and was also the first points scorer of this half too. After 8 minutes of play, Hove had a scrum about 10 metres out and the back row did a job on the Deal and Betteshanger flanker keeping him in the pack to allow Adam to surge through the gap and over the line.

Some arguments ensued over the scorer of the next try and we decided that people need to wear some better form of identification! After some discussion, this has been awarded to Sean and Adam scored the conversion to take the score to 29-14.

Deal and Betteshanger attempted a very speculative drop goal and it wasn’t a threat to the posts and the coaches used the break in play to bring on Nick Giles for Jack Baker.This seemed to open the floodgates somewhat and Deal and Betteshanger were appearing to tire (or possibly tyre in the number 8’s case!) somewhat and Chris Eden scored in the 22nd minute of the half with Adam getting the extra 2.

The Ben Ward / Nick Marshall double act then got moving again with Ben once more providing the service and Nick (glory boy) Marshall once again getting the points. Ryan was brought on for a quick airing after a long time injured. Bevan also came on for Glenn.

Watty had been hanging around aimlessly at the touch line some time earlier and came in for a decent bout of banter about his lack of scoring and so it was quite fitting that he was on the end of a good move involving Adam, Paul Cox and Ben Ward – leaving Watty to dash the final three inches, fall over and sit on the ball. Try scored!

The final try was to Matt Sole with a conversion by Adam – quite fitting as these two were the main contenders for man of the match with the nod going to Adam on this occasion.

I’m sure you all know that the SW2 results mean the play off cannot happen next week and so we will probably have to play two games next weekend – the rearranged Warlingham game and the Cup semi final against Chichester. Both are at home and I rather expect there’ll be some tucker involved.

So, let’s get a full house for both games and practise cheering and supporting as the Play Off the week following will be the biggest game in the history of this club since it began in 1933. Hove have never been higher than level 7 before and if we do win the play off we will be at the dizzy heights of level 6.

So, well done to all in performing even though the game was pretty much a dead rubber. Its always good to keep a habit of winning and its always good to run in a few tries and get 50+ on the board.

Let’s keep that up for the next three games.